This book is about three women and the choices they made for their
lives. Each woman, a different nationality with
perhaps more in common than they knew, all living in the Dayton
area. These real women, Nancy, Ife, and Ellyn give
us a detailed view of their experiences through life and what
those choices meant to them and their families. These are
ordinary women doing ordinary things. They are women that have
not always made the best decision when you look at it from
the reader’s point of view but they still learned from their
mistakes and made the best of their situations.

Pamela Ferris-Olson keeps the tone of the book in check in a way I
have never read an author do prior to her. The tone never takes
on the “feel sorry for me” tone prevalent in so many books about
women and their choices. The almost proud tone is refreshing in
that it doesn’t apologize to anyone for what happened nor does it
take on a “blaming” attitude that circumstances were to blame for
choices these women made. This alone is heartwarming as women
are survivors and in spite of the bad choices that are made over and
over again sometimes, these, like so many women find their way
out of situations using their strength and eventual wisdom.

I felt the Introduction was longer than necessary
and almost took on a tone of justification of why the book
was written, which was surprising considering the tone of the
remainder of the book.

The author took Ellyn’s story and seemed to dig deeper
into the family since Ellyn was adopted. Pamela
Ferris-Olson did a wonderful job at incorporating the
different thoughts and feelings of so many people in this family.
The inclusion of the emails and diaries were especially helpful in
creating the heart strings that connected the reader to the
family, during times the family was apart from each other.
There was a real sense of “knowing” this family and all they were
going through.

The postscript was also done well letting us know what has become
of these women and even though their lives were not easy ones, they
carved out success in their own terms and made it happen with their
determination and stamina. They all continue to live life to
the fullest.